Sinners: Critical Film Study(Part 3)

The Last Chapter

Oddly, it was Stack and Mary who seemed to be deeply affected, as if there was a human despair felt at the sight of Annie’s death. Stack, in his fight with Smoke, seeks to turn him, but there’s an esoteric force acting as an impregnable defense: it’s Annie’s mojo bag around his neck, stopping Stack from turning him. There’s an emotional moment shared between the two when the tables turn and Smoke has the advantage of killing Stack. Smoke is dealing with grief, feeling guilty for not “protecting” his brother—a very emotionally indelible scene. Preacher boy is fighting his own demon as he struggles with Remmick, he finds himself saying the lord’s prayer, and to his chagrin, Remmick is unfazed as he’s familiar with it as it was used against his people as their land was taken. Remmick begins quoting the prayer in unison with Sammie, as does the hive. This scene demonstrated that Christianity and colonization often went hand in hand, and that knowing “the word” doesn’t preclude one from evil, much like how Sammie saw his father reaching out to him at the beginning of the film and had flashes of Remmick tying his perception of them as being two sides of the same coin.